Starches, and particularly potato starches, are often used commercially to prepare edible food products. Some of those products may, for example, include puddings, pie fillings, gravies, baby foods, salad dressings, and the like.
It is common when preparing such food products to use a chemically cross-linked starch. The reason for using cross-linking agents is that it is well-known in the art that certain starches upon gelatinization will thicken, followed by thinning. This is well-known behavior of starches, believed to be caused by gelatinization to the point where the starch granules implode and fragment, leaving them thin and possibly stringy (long-pasted).
It is, of course, expensive to cross-link natural starches in order to prevent the thinning of starch materials; additionally, there has been some question about the safety of some of the modified starches. There is additionally a market interest in "natural" foods, unmodified by chemicals. Thus it would be desirable to prepare starches which did not need added cross-linkers.
It is a primary objective of the present invention to prepare a potato starch material which does not need to be chemically modified by linking, but yet which will have certain characteristics of a chemically modified starch.
Another objective of the present invention is to prepare food products using as the starch source a potato starch prepared from Pontiac potatoes as the primary starch source. Examples of such food products include puddings, pie fillings, gravy mixes, soups, and the like.
The method of accomplishing each of these, as well as other objectives for the present invention will become apparent from the detailed description which will follow hereinafter.